by Ralph Cotton
Chapter 4
At the Hotel Montana, Dawson unbuckled his saddlebags from behind the saddle, threw the bags over his shoulder, and slipped his Winchester from its saddle boot. He turned the horse’s reins and the mule’s lead rope over to a young man wearing a soft-billed service cap with the hotel’s name embroidered across the front of the crown. “See that they both get well grained,” he said, taking a silver coin from the pocket of his vest and pressing it into the young man’s outstretched hand.
“Yes, sir,” said the young man, closing his fingers over the coin almost with a snap. “Anything else you need here, you ask for me, Bennie Hitchins.” He eyed the Winchester in Dawson’s hand and the holstered Colt with rapt fascination.
“Obliged, Bennie,” said Dawson. “I’m—”
“Oh, I know who you are, Mr. Dawson!” said the young man. “I heard Mr. Caldwell call you Fast Larry’s friend. Then Victor told me you rode with Fast Larry!” He grinned excitedly. “Anything you want, you just let me know.” As he spoke he’d already begun backing away, leading both animals.
“Obliged again,” Dawson repeated. He watched both man and animals disappear for a moment into the traffic along the dirt street. Only when he’d seen the three reappear and walk into the livery barn a block away did Dawson step onto the hotel boardwalk and into the large clapboard and brick hotel building.
Within minutes of having signed into the hotel and taken a room overlooking the busy street, Dawson lay scrubbed and soaking in one of three tubs in the Montana’s private bathing house behind the hotel. When he’d finished, he changed into clean trail clothes he’d brought from his saddlebags and turned his dirty clothes over to one of the many Chinese bathhouse attendants to be boiled, dried, ironed, and delivered back to his room the following afternoon.
While he had soaked in steaming sudsy bathwater, another Chinese attendant had dusted and brushed his hat. Still another had cleaned and saddle-soaped his boots. When he stepped out of the tub, knowing that Caldwell and Victor would both be too busy to give him the shave and haircut Caldwell had promised, Dawson shaved himself with a bone-handled razor he carried down from his saddlebags and ran a wooden comb back through his washed hair.
When he’d stepped into his shiny clean boots and placed his dusted Stetson atop his damp head, Dawson tipped the leader of the bath attendants and returned to his room to clean and inspect his Colt and his Winchester before meeting Caldwell for dinner.
From the open window above the busy street, Dawson looked down at the congested boardwalk out in front of the barbershop where the line had grown even longer than it had been when he rode into Crabtown. Just off the boardwalk, in front of a tall red-and-white-striped barber pole, a group of tough-looking men had begun to gather after they’d seen the body and left through the side door. Tall bottles of whiskey made their rounds from hand to hand.
Dawson shook his head as he watched, reloading his Colt and slipping it into his holster. “My, my. All this because one man was good at killing others. Shaw, you beat all I’ve ever seen. . . .” He gazed up along the line of foothills northwest of town as if Lawrence Shaw might be somewhere watching from some high distant location. “If you’re smart you’ll never be seen or heard from again.”
It crossed Dawson’s mind that maybe when Stiff-leg Charlie went into the ground, talk of who was the fastest gun alive would be buried with him. Yet something told him that wouldn’t be the case. As he contemplated such a notion, his hand idly slipped the Colt back out of its holster in a way so smooth, quick, and natural that had someone been watching they would have a hard time catching sight of it.
He couldn’t judge Shaw too harshly for faking his own death, Dawson thought as he twirled the Colt back and forth effortlessly, then let it spin down into his holster. He knew firsthand how hard it could be to be known as just a fast gun, let alone the fastest gun alive. After riding with Shaw he himself had gone through a period of time when it seemed that every gunman, saddle tramp, and liquored-up cow-hand had convinced themselves that killing Cray Dawson would make them a somebody in a world full of nobodies.
I hope it works out for you . . . he heard himself telling Shaw. On the street below an empty bottle flew through the air and landed in the dirt. A gunshot barked sharply from among the crowd and the bottle exploded in a spray of broken glass. Dawson watched, yet his mind still dealt with the matter of Lawrence Shaw, of himself, and of the blind and mindless fate that propelled a man toward his destiny.
On the street one drinker pushed another as Dawson considered the events that had brought him and his friend Shaw back together after they’d ridden for so many years on separate trails. Below, a fistfight broke out; another bottle flew through the air; another shot exploded.
As the events of the past moved across his mind like vague images through a morning fog, he pictured himself and Rosa Shaw, the two of them together in Lawrence Shaw’s bed, locked in a lovers’ embrace. And yet as he pictured it, at the same time he pictured the terrible bloodletting that was to follow her death when he and her husband wreaked vengeance on the men who had killed her.
At the risk of his life Dawson had tried to clear the air with Shaw before they rode off in search of Rosa’s killers. He tried to tell Shaw, but Shaw wouldn’t allow it. Perhaps he’d already known, Dawson thought, watching the two men on the street rolling, punching, and kicking through the urine-soaked ground along the hitch rail where horses whinnied and reared and crow-hopped clear of them.
Yes, Shaw knew, Dawson told himself, the same as he’d told himself a thousand times before when his memory reached this part of its familiar reenactment. Shaw knew, yet he’d never allowed it to be discussed between them. Had they talked about it, and had Dawson admitted in no uncertain terms what had actually gone on between himself and Shaw’s wife, Dawson realized there was a good possibility he would’ve been dead. Not faking death, he thought, glancing away from the muddy urine-stained combatants to the door of the barbershop, but truly dead, as dead as Stiff-leg Charlie.
But all of that was behind him, Dawson forced himself to realize, putting both the memories and their participants out of his mind. He watched the fighters on the street unlock from one another, back off, and take a new stand, one grabbing his muddy empty holster, the other fumbling with the mud-slick handle of a big Star revolver. But before he could get the gun cleared and raised, Sheriff Foley sailed in out of nowhere.
With the agility of a man half his age, the aged sheriff knocked the armed man to the ground, at the same time yanking the Star from its holster and making a vicious swipe with the barrel across its owner’s skull as he tried to raise himself to his knees and pull a hideout gun from inside his muddy shirt.
Good work again, Sheriff . . . Dawson winced slightly at the sight of iron gun barrel against human skull. But as he watched he saw the other man make a move toward his gun lying in the mud only to meet the hard hickory shotgun butt as Caldwell stepped in from the crowd and slammed it into his jaw. Mud flew from the man’s hair before he hit the ground.
“Another nice job, Caldwell,” Dawson murmured aloud. While the pie-faced undertaker turned barber stood with his shotgun at port arms, Foley walked into the crowd of toughs, jerked two bottles of whiskey from drunken hands, and backed away, the muddy Star in his waistband, his own Colt out, cocked and pointed, backed by Caldwell’s scattergun.
Dawson shook his head slowly and couldn’t help but ask himself, if Shaw were truly dead, was this the sort of man who would lay claim to his reputation? Quarterwise to the crowd, Brue Holley rode slowly along atop a big black-stocking silver-gray. He sat half turned in his saddle, observing Foley and the crowd with detached interest.
There’s one to watch out for, Dawson reminded himself, seeing the bounty hunter right himself in his saddle and ride away, the tails of a black bearskin coat hanging far down the horse’s flanks. Yet, even as Dawson cautioned himself, he took a deep breath and let it out, reminding himself that this life was behind hi
m now. He’d left all this behind him in Somos Santos, Texas, in the top drawer of a battered oaken desk, in a piece of tin shaped into a star.
“Adios, fastest gun alive.” He smiled to himself, picking up his hat and setting it atop his head. “Wherever you are.”
Madden Peru, Rodney Dolan, Elton Shears, and Hank Kuntz stopped their horses midtrail, then spread out a few yards in four directions and sat staring at Brue Holley, who sat atop his big silver-gray blocking the trail. Holley made a menacing figure in his black bearskin coat, his wide-brimmed hat lowered on his forehead, a tall Spencer rifle standing in his gloved hand.
“What do you want, Holley?” Peru asked in a less than hospitable tone, recognizing the bounty hunter and not allowing himself to be intimidated by him.
“Well now,” Holley replied, “ain’t you the unsociable one today?”
“There’s no reward on any of us,” said Peru. “So you’ve got no right or reason to bring us any trouble.”
“Right you are,” said Holley, turning the big silver-gray and nudging it a step closer. “I’m not bringing any trouble to yas, although if I was to kill every one of you and wait a few days for your pasts to catch up to you, somebody up here would post a reward.” He tweaked his mustache, staring hard at Peru even as he smiled.
Staring straight back at him without a smile, Peru said to the others loud enough for Holley to hear, “When I say to, everybody unload on his ass. The world will thank us for it.”
“Easy, now, Madden,” said Holley, appearing undisturbed by Peru’s comment. “Like I said, I ain’t after yas. I just want to talk some, see if we can’t help one another out for a change, instead of all the time going around with a mad-on.”
Peru eased down a bit and said, “What’s on your mind, bounty man?”
“I expect you already heard about somebody killing Fast Larry Shaw. I’m looking for the old prospector who brought his body to town. You boys prowl these foothills like coyotes. I figured you’d know who he is.”
The four only stared at him with flat indiscernible expressions.
“Well, do yas?” Holley asked.
“We’re waiting,” said Peru.
“Waiting for what?” Holley asked, getting a little agitated by Peru’s attitude.
“Waiting for you to tell us just how you can help us out,” said Peru. “You’ve only told us how we can help you.”
Holley growled under his breath, “Smart-aleck son of a bitch.” But aloud he said, “I know you boys are going to keep doing what you do up here in God’s country. Sooner or later somebody’ll want to see you hang. When that time comes, instead of me killing you, I’ll tip you off, let you know who’s on your trail and how hard and fast you’ll need to run.” He squinted. “Make sense to yas?” His good eye scanned the four one at a time. “Rodney? Cunts? Nigger boy?”
“It’s Kuntz, gawdamn you!” said Hank Kuntz, his hand almost instinctively going for his holstered pistol. Shears also bristled at Holley’s insult, but he managed to keep his rage in check.
“Hank! Elton!” Rodney Dolan snapped quickly, taking the authority. “Don’t let this old turd get to you.”
“The thing is,” Peru replied to Holley in a haughty tone, “none of us is going to be running from anybody from now on.”
“Oh, really?” said the bounty hunter. “What does this mean, that you’re all going on up into Canada, let the queen’s red darlings get the honor of killing yas?”
Ignoring him, Peru said, “Besides, you don’t need to track down any hermit prospector to try and figure out who it was killed Fast Larry . . . you’re looking at him.”
At first Holley only gave a dark chuckle and said, “Sure you did, Peru.” But then, seeing the serious look on Peru’s face, he said, “Hey, you’re not joking with me, are you?”
“Do I look like I’m joking?” said Peru in a confident even tone, something different than Holley had ever seen from him.
Holley fell silent for a moment, studying each of the four faces in turn. “If I thought it was true, it would save me a lot of traipsing through the foothills,” he said in a somber voice. “Of course it means I’d have to kill you and take what thunder you took from Shaw.”
“You’d try,” Peru said flatly.
Holley looked back and forth at the faces for a moment, his face a grim killing mask. It appeared to Peru that at any second, the bounty hunter would drop the rifle barrel and get off a left-handed shot while his right hand brought his Colt up into play, a move Holley had made famous. “Get ready, boys,” he murmured under his breath.
But suddenly, instead of Holley making his trademark move, he burst out in a laugh that held the four young gunmen stunned for a moment until he collected himself and said, “Peru, you almost did it. You almost had me there for a minute.” He chuckled as he backed his horse a step off the trail, toward a clump of trees where he’d been lying in wait. “The likes of a ragged-ass sneak thief like you killing Fast Larry Shaw? I’d have to be a damn fool to believe something like that.”
“It’s true,” said Dolan, “we saw it with our own eyes. We’re his witnesses!”
“Oh well, why didn’t you say so?” said Holley, pulling farther out of pistol range toward the trees. “Now, that makes all the difference in the world. Nobody would believe Madden Peru. But hell, who would ever question an upstanding bunch like you three scarecrows?” He laughed again as he stepped his horse out of sight, calling back to them, “Good luck getting the world to believe this. You should have made a deal with me, boys. When things go wrong for you—and things will go wrong for yas—I might have helped. But now all I say is to hell with yas.”
The four sat staring blankly until Holley rode out of sight. Finally, Peru said in a rejected tone, “That son of a bitch didn’t believe me.”
“Well,” said Dolan, “you have to admit it is a stretch, thinking somebody like one of us killed a man like Fast Larry Shaw.”
“But I killed him, damn it. You all saw me do it,” Peru insisted. “What the hell is it going to take to convince folks I done it?” He looked at Dolan with a bemused expression.
“We go on and do what we planned to do,” said Dolan. “To hell with Brue Holley. He’s nothing but a short-shanked over-the-hill bounty dog anyway.”
“You mean on into Crabtown?” asked Kuntz.
“Yeah, on into Crabtown,” said Dolan. “Only you and Shears will wait for us outside the town limits, case it goes wrong and we end up in jail. You two will have to come break us out.”
“I don’t see why me and Shears can’t ride in too,” said Kuntz.
“We went over it, Kuntz,” Dolan said with an exasperated breath. “You’ve got too bad a temper to stand up under questioning.” He looked at Shears and said, “No offense, Elton, but you being a Negro . . . well, nobody is going to take your word for nothing.”
“I hear you,” said Shears. “No offense taken.”
Dolan went on, saying, “We’ll tell the sheriff there are two more witnesses if we need to . . . but only if we need to.” He turned to Peru and asked, “Are you ready to go do it?”
“I’ve been ready,” said Peru, gigging his horse as he turned it toward Crabtown.
Chapter 5
On a narrow mud-rutted side street, Dawson, Caldwell, and Sheriff Foley sat at a corner table in Clure’s Drover’s Restaurant, a small plank and tin roof structure just off Crabtown’s main thoroughfare. They ate thick elk steaks roasted on an open grill out back and served with sliced potatoes under a blanket of thick steamy gravy and chopped prairie onions.
“Things have gotten steadily worse ever since word got out,” said Sheriff Foley, the conversation having been about the riffraff arriving in town to see the body on display. “By now the news has made it to all the cattle trails, I expect.”
“Yes, I’m certain of it,” said Caldwell, having just swallowed a mouthful of gravy and potatoes. “Tomorrow morning, we put the body in the ground and have done with it.” As he spoke he rai
sed a mug of dark beer as if in a toast.
Dawson took a drink of hot coffee and watched as the sheriff carved himself a large bite of steak and raised it to his mouth on a wooden-handled fork. “Sheriff, you and the barber here do good work together, if you don’t mind me saying so.”
Foley only nodded as he chewed hungrily on the tender savory meat.
“We don’t mind you saying so at all,” said Caldwell, with a smile. “I consider that quite a compliment coming from you.” He gestured toward Foley. “This man has taught me a lot about upholding the law. He’s the best I’ve ever seen.”
“Ah,” said Foley, waving the compliment away with his fork. “I just know my job, is all. I reckon I ought to by now. I’ve been serving in some legal capacity or other ever since this place was still called Last Chance Gulch . . . all the way back in sixty-four.”
“Back when the four Georgians first struck gold?” Dawson asked.
Foley eyed him, impressed by his knowledge of the town’s history. “I admire a man who scouts his trail before he rides it.”
“I didn’t want to come all this way for nothing,” said Dawson.
Foley nodded. “To answer your question, yes, this is where the four Georgians first struck placer gold. Crabtown is named after one of the Georgians, fellow by the name of John Crab. But there’s been more than placer gold struck here. There’s also been quartz gold, lead, and silver struck all around. That’s why there’s always such a boom going on. This place is a hub of commerce. There’s talk of changing the name again, to something more proper sounding. Some are mentioning taking the same name as a town in Minnesota . . . Saint Helena.”
Caldwell grinned. “But some are saying Crabtown has never been a saint, so maybe they’ll decide to drop the Saint part.”
“Saint or no saint, I suppose Shaw couldn’t have picked a better place to die,” Dawson commented, his voice lowered enough to keep from being overheard in the quickly filling restaurant.
